The Metropolitan Police have regularly arrested protesters when there is an extremely low chance of them ever being charged, new research by Greenpeace indicates.

Police officers made more than 600 arrests in London over the last six years for conspiracy to cause public nuisance but only 18 of them - less than three per cent - resulted in charges. The research also showed an almost tenfold rise in the number of arrests in the capital since 2019, when environmental protests became widespread. 

These numbers support the belief, widespread amongst activists and protesters, that the police are abusing this offence and other anti-protest laws to remove and intimidate peaceful protesters.

Participation

Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK said: “The fact that police are routinely dragging protesters off the streets for a crime they almost always fail to charge them with amounts to an abuse of their powers and an assault on the right to protest. 

"Arresting law-abiding people because they’re politically inconvenient is a frightening development in any democracy, and is a direct result of the government’s instinct to shut down free speech and prevent people standing up for issues they care deeply about.”

Khalid Abdallah, an actor and protester for Palestinian rights from London who appears in the campaign, said: “I think a lot of people don’t realise that the crackdown on protest isn’t just about tougher laws on disruptive civil disobedience, it’s about creating a climate of intimidation. 

"The right to speak out against the actions of the government is an important test of whether you live in a free, democratic country. I have lived in countries where rights we hold dear in Britain do not exist, and my family has paid the price for speaking out. 

"So I did not expect Britain to be the country where I would first be investigated by police for my participation at a public protest. For six months I lived under the threat of being charged, until it was confirmed the police would not take further action. Clearly, these statistics show I’m not an isolated case.”

Offence

A sharp increase in such arrests 2019 happened around the same time that Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future brought thousands of people onto the streets of London to protest against the lack of action to tackle climate change. 

Since then, successive governments have passed additional anti-protest laws giving police officers a wider range of offences to choose from, many carrying lengthy custodial sentences, resulting in hundreds of protesters being arrested and some being handed record prison sentences of up to five years.

Greenpeace and the other groups are calling on the home secretary to restore people’s right to make their voices heard on issues they care about by reversing anti-protest measures in two key pieces of legislation passed since 2022. 

They are also asking ministers to strike out protest clauses in the Crime and Policing Bill currently making its way through parliament.

Greenpeace used Freedom of Information requests to find out how many people were arrested between 2012 and March 2025 on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance – an offence under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 that is frequently used by the police to clear protesters from the streets.

Custody

Raj Chada, a partner at the law firm Hodge Jones & Allen, told The Guardian: “There was a massive growth in arrests for public nuisance in the latter days of XR … which were previously arrested for obstruction of the highway, and the vast majority of those cases never went anywhere.”

The offence previously existed only under common law but new legislation gave police powers to arrest and detain protesters and take DNA, fingerprints and photos. 

Chada added: “It was a way for police control for demonstrations, because you could put bail conditions more easily on people to prevent them coming into central London.

"You could potentially put people into custody. You would put them on bail for several months, wait until the XR action was over, and then either no-further-action it or charge them with a more minor offence like obstruction of the highway.”

Placards

Tim Crosland, the director of the environmental litigation charity Plan B, said: “The Greenpeace research confirms what we’ve witnessed directly these last few years. Part of the crackdown on civil society is the deliberate inflation of grounds of arrest.

“This is both an intimidation tactic in itself and also unlocks powers of search and seizure under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, enabling the police to seize phones and laptops and to conduct dawn raids on those exercising their democratic rights.”

The findings come as four leading environmental and human rights groups – Amnesty International UK, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Liberty – launch a nationwide advertising campaign to stand up for the right to protest. 

The campaign features videos of real protesters on a range of issues holding placards that say ‘I’m protesting in here to avoid arrest out there’.

Suspicion

The protesters appear on digital billboards clustered in popular shopping areas in London, Birmingham and Manchester, given free to the campaign as the prize in Ocean Outdoor’s annual Digital Creative Competition. 

Digital special effects by creative agency ‘elvis’ make the protesters appear to be present on the street, like a virtual protest march. They each represent a different cause including disability rights, Gaza, climate change, anti-black racism, plastic pollution and the campaign to keep the NHS public.

Researchers at Greenpeace asked the Metropolitan Police to provide data on arrests and charges for public nuisance offences between 2012 and March 2025. 

They found there had been 67 arrests and eight charges for conspiring to cause a public nuisance between 2012 and the end of 2018, compared with 638 arrests and 18 charges since 2019, equating to an almost tenfold increase in arrests. The rate of arrests resulting in charges also dropped from around 12 per cent to below three per cent. 

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: “The threshold for arrest is reasonable suspicion that an offence has occurred. The threshold to charge someone is significantly higher."

These Authors

Joe Sandler Clarke is a reporter with the Unearthed team at Greenpeace. Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist. This article is based on research from Unearthed with additional reporting and editing from The Ecologist.